Yasuaki Yamashita, a survivor of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. (Photo by Paule Saviano)

It has been 69 years since the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As he has done for the last 20 years, Rev. Dr. Kenjitsu Nakagai, a Buddhist priest living in New York, organized an interfaith memorial event to commemorate the bombings.

On August 5, a peace gathering will be held at the West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street in Manhattan, while a peace concert will be held on August 8. (Hiroshima was bombed on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.)

Forming a backdrop for the events is a photography exhibit, “From Above,” with photos taken by Paule Saviano of various survivors of the bombings. Some of the photos appeared in a book of the same title, published in Tokyo.

Although the book was published in 2011, Saviano continues to seek out and photograph aging survivors of the bombing, in order to take their portraits and collect their thoughts before they die. As part of the project he interviews his subjects and accompanies their photographs with quotes.

The photographer spoke about his project at a kickoff reception for the commemoration on August 1. “I wanted the human faces to tell the history,” he said.

A number of hibakusha (nuclear bomb victims) lived outside Japan after World War II. Hideo Sotobayashi, for example, lived in Berlin since the 1950s and started speaking about his “hibakusha” story only after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster brought on by the tsunami in March 2011. Saviano photographed him just eight months before Mr. Sotobayashi’s death.

Paule Saviano at the exhibit “From Above.” (Photo by Kinue Imai Weinstein for Voices of NY)

It was during a photo exhibit he had in Tokyo in 2007 that Saviano, a native of Brooklyn, became interested in the nuclear bomb victims. With assistance from the Peace Wing of Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, he met victims in 2008.

The book “From Above,” contains 51 black-and-white photos. In addition to victims of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, it includes pictures of the Bikini Incident (at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands), a nuclear testing disaster in the 1950s, and the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, Germany, during World War II.

This is what Hidetaka Komine, a survivor of Nagasaki, told Saviano: “I was 4 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped. So I don’t know ‘normal life.’ I hated the war for a long time, but realized having a grudge does nothing. I have to speak and leave messages to the next generation.”

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The number of Puerto Rican women receiving benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) dropped by 43 percent in the past five years, El Vocero reports. The numbers reflect a childbirth drop partially caused by the Zika virus scare, during which many women avoided pregnancy, but the main cause is the mass emigration of young families away from the island. The decrease in the federal program of recipients has also hit businesses that provide WIC-funded foods: 18 percent of them have closed, and the rest have been forced to diversify their operations. Link to original story →

An investigation by El Nuevo Día shows the “extreme decay” of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, as the municipal government reduced its contractual commitments almost by half compared to 2013. As residents complain of crumbling roads, criminality and lack of cleaning services, the city has had a population loss of more than 90,000 residents in the past 10 years. The loss in municipal income has resulted in a $183 million debt in spite of a $73 million budget cut. The problem is exacerbated by non-payments the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico and the city’s difficulties in borrowing money. Link to original story →

Pro-immigrant organizations in Georgia expressed relief and surprise as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp emerged as an unlikely ally this week, Mundo Hispánico reports. Kemp abolished a board investigating immigration law violations which has been accused of illegally harassing immigrant communities. Kemp also vetoed the SB15 bill, requiring Georgia schools to investigate students for “suspicious activities” and create “school safety coaches,” which activists feared would target minority youths. “This is definitely a victory for us,” said Adelina Nicholls, of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR). “You have your ups and downs but this triumph motivates us to keep going.”
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